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Vinyl Record Pressing Plants Struggle To Keep Up With Demand
An anonymous reader writes The WSJ reports that the revival of vinyl records, a several-year trend that many figured was a passing fad, has accelerated during 2014 with an astounding 49 percent sales increase over 2013 (line chart here). Some listeners think that vinyl reproduces sound better than digital, and some youngsters like the social experience of gathering around a turntable. The records are pressed at a handful of decades-old, labor-intensive factories that can't keep up with the demand; but since the increased sales still represent only about 2 percent of US music sales, there hasn't been a rush of capital investment to open new plants. Raw vinyl must now be imported to America from countries such as Thailand, since the last US supplier closed shop years ago. Meanwhile, an industry pro offers his take on the endless debate of audio differences between analog records and digital formats; it turns out there were reasons for limiting playing time on each side back in the day, apart from bands not having enough decent material.
Doubtful that is what he is talking about. My dad has a masters in optical physics with a minor in audiology and he explained it to be by drawing a graph of the "sound waves" (this was many years ago so someone please correct/improve on my explanation) of analog vs digital sound (WAV/CD format). The analog waves looked like regular osilloscope waves but the digital ones looked like tiny sets of a thousand stairs going up and down. He claimed this difference may be perceivable by some people.